A message of ''peace'' from the sky

Small shops line the streets, selling everything from fruit and vegetables to antiquated televisions, freshly butchered meat to mobile telephones.

However, it’s still not the peaceful idyll that everyone living here hopes it one day will be. For Europeans, the safest way to travel is in a taxi using a trusted company instead of one of the large Toyota Land Cruisers that the many foreigners here use to squeeze their way through the traffic. It’s also increasingly dangerous to wear the internationally recognised blue body armor that signifies a neutral observer, as journalists are targeted more and more by the insurgents.

Adrenaline junky

So it was above this city that Captain Fareed Lafta, Iraqi pilot, trained cosmonaut and someone that could reasonably be called an ‘adrenaline junky’, leapt from a helicopter at 5000 feet to skydive down in to the city performing what he terms a ‘Peace Jump’. Effectively a PR stunt designed to grab the imagination of a populace used to decades of conflict, it is also to, as he terms it, ‘spread peace’.

It’s easy to understand why Fareed has used his skill as a skydiver to do this; such messages of brotherly love can sound hollow in a country as torn apart by violence as Afghanistan, so doing something this out of the ordinary certainly gains the attention of a populace for whom such events still have a huge amount of novelty value.

Fareed has done this to great effect before. He performed a similar skydive with the same message above his native Baghdad in 2009. It also has symbolic resonance amongst the skydiving fraternity; such a jump signals a city is safe – Fareed’s skydive was the first since the current hostilities began.

Reading his achievements, it is easy to understand why Fareed is held up as such a role model for young Iraqis. The first Arab man to fly a jet to the edge of space, a trained cosmonaut, deep sea diver and record-holding skydiver (he was part of the team that became the first people to skydive from above Mount Everest), the list is endless. So when he touches down in the middle of the Gazi Stadium, greeted by an emphatically enthusiastic crowd of well-wishers, it’s surprising to find that this larger-than-life character is in fact a man of slight physical stature and appealing humility.

“This is just a symbol – I cannot just come here and say ‘okay, enough fighting’. I just want to give people hope; that’s it” he says. Fareed comes across as disarmingly sincere, perhaps even naive – a possible explanation for a mindset that allows him to subject himself to exploits most would find utterly terrifying.

“I hope the people will take this message to love one another and to rebuild their country without terrorism and without violence”.

He found an apt setting for such a statement. It was in this very stadium that the Taliban would stone ‘adulterers’ to death after football matches. It is a past most Afghans are desperate to leave behind and any small steps towards normality like Fareed’s jump are enthusiastically welcomed.

Above us Fareed’s helicopter circles, dropping leaflets into the stadium that bear the internationally recognised rings of the Olympic movement, along with a message of the barriers that all sports can break down. Momentarily the crowd all point their camera lenses upwards at the spectacle, applaud their approval, then quickly turn their attention back to the bashful and smiling Iraqi at the centre of their huddle.

An inspiration to all

But with such events come realisations of what people have been missing for all these years. A group of young Afghani women have been casting a typically critical teenage eye over proceedings and, far from being awed by such things, want to know when it will be their turn.

“It was a good experience for me” declares one. “Someone should train women to do this as well” says another. “Women can skydive as well as men, we are the same. If someone taught women skydiving we could do it too.”

They cut a tellingly confident and self-assured group; not the fawning, compliant statements of awe at male achievement the average Taliban activist would hope for.

Evidence of the event is still apparent days later, as Fareed’s leaflets can be seen proudly displayed around the city. He came to ‘spread peace’ - it’s a message many here are all too ready to embrace.